“It’s a bit like a film casting,” said the hairstylist Paul Hanlon, gesturing to the sea of fresh faces milling about backstage at Gucci this afternoon. With their androgynous, bohemian beauty, the fashion house’s new model troupe seemed like a 180-degree turnaround from the slick, sexed-up glamazons of recent runway seasons—and that was exactly the point. For his first Gucci collection, creative director Alessandro Michele was channeling a softer, dreamier muse, from her rumpled, fuzzy waves right down to her furry cutaway loafers.

“Alessandro kept saying ‘street,’ ” said Hanlon—although from the look of things, he might have meant Haight-Ashbury. To conjure a “California in the seventies” texture, Hanlon had asked models to go to sleep with freshly washed, damp hair the night before the show. From there, “we’re treating them as individuals. Maybe [this one] is an art student, maybe [that one] is in a band,” he said, gesturing toward a short haired brunette’s relaxed half-back ponytail before adding, “It’s what she was wearing when she walked in.” Other girls got a soft wash of pink color through the ends of their hair (“Courtney Love during the Hole years”) or a few wayward bobby pins to secure a set of pillowy bangs away from the face. “It’s grunge—but not dirty. The hair is clean, there’s a quality to it,” he said of misting down flyaways with water and finishing off the ends with a bit of Bumble and Bumble Brilliantine shine serum. A few models, like Hedvig Palm, wore ornate seashell hair combs, which had the homespun look of having been gathered and strung together, fastened alongside the face.

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Photographed by Delphine Achard

Across the room, makeup artist Pat McGrath was keeping things similarly naturalistic. “It’s [embracing] the boys and girls as they are. There’s no real uniform—in a way, it’s quite eccentric,” she said of using a bit of Gucci Lustrous Glow Foundation and Concealer only “where needed,” then swirling a bit of tawny eye shadow (from the company’s Magnetic Color Shadow Duo in Aristocratic) along the lids for definition. A swipe of Gucci Opulent Volume Mascara, a dab of lip balm, and a brow pencil finished the look. “There’s freshness and a reality to it,” said McGrath. “Isn’t it great?”​